Facts don’t disappear just because they’re inconvenient

This is a complex issue and one point of view well presented by the author. There are other viewpoints. We welcome letters expressing them. ~Editors

A recent letter responding to coverage of our local protest made a series of claims meant to settle the issue with a partisan shrug: Venezuelans are celebrating. The left is angry. That should tell you everything you need to know.

It doesn’t, unless we are willing to ignore context, law, and consequences.

Let’s begin with what is true. Nicolás Maduro presided over an authoritarian regimemarked by corruption, repression, and economic collapse. U.S. sanctions against his government did not begin with Donald Trump. In 2015, President Obama designated Venezuela an “extraordinary threat, a legal classification required under U.S. law to impose targeted sanctions. The Justice Department later indicted Maduro on drug-trafficking charges, and the Biden administration increased the reward for informationleading to his arrest.

Many Venezuelans, particularly those who fled the country, understandably feel relief at this removal. Their suffering is real, and their voices deserve respect. But the letter leaves out facts that fundamentally change the picture.

The Obama designation cited was not authorization for military action or regime change. The administration explicitly stated that Venezuela did not pose a military threat; the order was a legal tool to enable sanctions. Likewise, the Biden administration pursued a law-enforcement strategy, indictments, rewards, and diplomatic pressure, not a unilateral military operation to seize a sitting head of state.

That escalation belongs to Donald Trump. Trump did not merely “execute enforcement.” He openly spoke, on the record, about the United States “taking over” Venezuela and “bringing in the oil companies to take over their reserves.” Those words matter. They go far beyond drug enforcement and move into the language of economic domination, raising legitimate concerns about motive and precedent.

There is another inconvenient fact the letter omits, one that exposes the selective morality behind the argument. The hypocrisy is hard to ignore: the same administration that ordered a dramatic overseas capture of Nicolás Maduro on drug-trafficking charges had just pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former head of state convicted by a U.S. jury of conspiring to move massive quantities of cocaine into the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison. When an unproven indictment justifies military force, while a proven conviction is erased with a signature, the so-called war on drugs reveals itself not as justice, but political convenience.

The letter also asks, “Where were the protests then?” History answers clearly: they existed. Americans protested U.S. military actions under Reagan, Bush, Obama, and Biden, in Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and beyond. Questioning executive power has never belonged to one party. It is a democratic obligation.

None of this requires defending Nicolás Maduro. His regime caused immense harm, dismantled democratic institutions, and forced millions to flee. But acknowledging that truth does not require blind approval of how power is exercised in his removal.

What occurred was not routine. It was an extraordinary assertion of U.S. military authority against a sovereign nation, ordered by a president who openly spoke of seizing another country’s resources and has shown selective concern for the rule of law.

That is why people protested. Not because they support dictatorship. Not because they oppose accountability. But because democracy depends not only on outcomes, it depends on limits.

If we are going to tell the whole story, then we must tell all of it. Facts do not disappear simply because they are inconvenient. And neither should our responsibility to question power, even when, especially when, it claims to act in our name.

Gayle Kersten
Fernandina Beach